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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29126436">birthplace</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifis/pseuds/scifis'>scifis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Boyz (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Space, Ambiguous Relationships, Blood and Gore, M/M, Personal Growth, Pining, War Era</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:00:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,654</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29126436</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifis/pseuds/scifis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how things end up working out—not by luck, not by fate, never a coincidence: with practice, once it becomes muscle memory, when nothing in the multitude of existing worlds can force a creator away from their creation; Sunwoo knows this. Changmin and Jacob know this. They work their way through it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bae Joonyoung | Jacob/Ji Changmin | Q, Bae Joonyoung | Jacob/Ji Changmin | Q/Kim Sunwoo, Bae Joonyoung | Jacob/Kim Sunwoo, Ji Changmin | Q/Kim Sunwoo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>birthplace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i don’t even know. i don’t. i- firstly, i wanna say thank you to friends who will listen to you talk about trauma and how writing is a magnifying glass, an escapism, a coping mechanism for you late at night; a friend in particular. they know who they are. thank you, friend. it means more than you know.</p><p>at some point i just wanted so badly to be done with this because i consider it a monster, but some may not. it was written to the birthplace album by novo amor and loosely based on a mixture of sci-fi media that i consume or consumes me. (everything here is so deeply personal i can only ask of you to be kind. please, please be kind.)</p><p>i’m never truly sorry for writing anything except if there’s mistakes somewhere in this, in which case please tell me in the comments! truly hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bright white lights can be so damaging. They make the man underneath him seem so much older than he actually is, leave no room for shadows on his face — it’s crystal clear, suddenly, how the next five minutes will go. Rooted to the man like it crawled its way there by force: the mirror-image of himself. He looks down and sees it. This is what I am made of, Sunwoo thinks, fists locked with a ribcage that resembles his own — these bones are like my bones, this skin feels like my skin. This is what I am made of, and he punches again, and again, as the man heaves for air, as his eyes lose their focus. What is the limit. What is the line.</p><p>Can I cross it.</p><p>The vents don’t work too well in the cage, hence the name. Oxygen comes out of them every ten minutes and the training room is big enough to fit at least twenty people. Sunwoo knows what suffocating feels like and this is not it, but the fear—It stays with him. It keeps him alive. It makes him breathe anyway.</p><p>He can hear his name because they are chanting it, the people around him, two syllables too long, adding to the asphyxiating aspect of it all. Sun-woo. Sun-woo. What is he, really.</p><p>Once the man stops fighting back, stops trying to break Sunwoo’s ribs or claw at Sunwoo’s insides, simply stops pretending he can somehow magically win this after being pinned to the ground for the past minute or so, Sunwoo stops too. He inhales for a long time and breathes nothing in, but as he exhales makes sure to take everything out. </p><p>Some people start applauding and cheering for him. Sunwoo sits in a corner of the cage and waits for the officers to take him with blood on his hands, not his own. Never his own.</p><p>When they get there, the officers haul him up by his arms and whenever, wherever they touch him it hurts. His whole body hurts. The air outside the cage is easier to breathe, artificial, making the metallic taste on Sunwoo’s tongue unbearable now that it turns cold. There are glass panels around him and they cover the walls from top to bottom, too big, too grand, unsettling. The light outside makes the skin of his hands glisten — he’s thankful, for a moment, that the stars are able to make something look so beautiful. It ends quickly. In case he’s not ready to see a face he recognizes in the three men in black and mud-green uniforms who trail behind him, he doesn’t dare look back at them. </p><p>Sunwoo keeps looking outside, and the stars stare right back, and they keep walking and walking until— “You need to grow up, kid,” one of the officers says once they reach a familiar white door. Sunwoo doesn’t know how to disagree, or if he can.</p><p>Inside, the first thing Jacob tells him is “You’re grown.”</p><p>This is familiar as well: long windows near the ceiling, dimmed white lights, small gray locker on the wall opposite the door, a glass desk he’ll only have in the future if he behaves well enough. This is familiar. This is boring. Second Lieutenant Bae’s office, on the surface, is just like any other on this floor but this isn’t Lt. Bae — this is Jacob, from the lack of posture to the furrow of his brows and, because this is Jacob, just Cobie, Sunwoo knows where to look and what to look for. He stares at the pens and papers scattered around the floor, research and battle plans abandoned in a crisis; stares at the miniature Milky Way set Jacob keeps by his computer, accompanied by glowing Suns and all. </p><p>Back in the cage he wished people would stop screaming his name. The silence is suffocating, now. What can he say? What can’t he say? Should he even say anything at all. There is a kind, Sunwoo thinks, there is a kind of knowing that is as difficult as it is rewarding. Knowing what to say. Knowing what to feel. Knowing how to get under Jacob’s skin and plant himself there, make a home out of his bones, the valley of his ribs a place where he can grow his roots. </p><p>On the other hand, there is a kind of knowing that makes the antonym even scarier. What has changed, Sunwoo asks himself, what could possibly have changed? What went wrong? How can I know, discover, find the answers to this? What answers am I trying to find?</p><p>Like Sunwoo, Jacob pauses. Inhales something sharp. His eyes are full of emotion, the brown of them against his white, maroon-detailed uniform, timeless — there is so much depth to them. To him as a whole. A soul born in the battlefield and for the battlefield, never for himself. Sunwoo wonders briefly if carrying a gun around has made Jacob feel heavy at times, heavy like he is in Sunwoo’s memories, chronic and everlasting and difficult to eradicate. If it has made him think more about the war. If death has a different meaning now that Jacob has looked at it in the eye.</p><p>“One of these days you’re gonna get seriously injured and no one in that <em> cage </em> of yours will care,” Lt. Bae says. You’re grown, Sunwoo repeats in his head quietly, tenderly. “It’s crazy to me that you keep doing this, I— You’re not someone I can take care of anymore, Sunwoo.”</p><p>It leaves him breathless to relearn that his name can ever sound like that. He’s not someone Lt. Bae can take care of anymore, — well. Good, Sunwoo thinks, I do not need you to. — but there is knowing and there is not knowing and only one of those will ever get him somewhere in the vast and undying Universe they live in so Sunwoo answers him with a firm “I wish you would.”</p><p>To know something is to be in constant battle with it. To know something, to understand something, to make a flower bed grow: whatever war means, this is close, too. Sunwoo waits for Jacob’s eyebrows to raise, and then leaves.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He’s invited to the cage again a few days later but doesn’t even consider participating, this time. Jacob’s words cling to his ears and he repeats them inside his head like a mantra: You’re grown, you’re grown, you’re grown. More than anything, Sunwoo wants Jacob to be right. Wants Jacob to know him, to be proud of him. Wants to be good and grown and exceed whatever expectations Jacob might have of him.</p><p>The fight is uninteresting at first — big man versus small man, two petty officers with too much time on their hands and not enough adrenaline on their day-to-day lives — but the lack of oxygen makes Sunwoo’s head spin in a nice way, and he indulges in the cheers around him when, surprisingly, the small man with a beard wins. His name is lost in the middle of the chants, something foreign, something Sunwoo doesn’t care about. </p><p>He watches for a couple more minutes before deciding he’s had enough and wants to sleep, can feel his brain inside his head, can taste his synapses like they’re honey. Sunwoo’s movements are loose when he goes outside, where breathing feels too much like delayed gratification. Someone pats him on the shoulder and he looks up, takes his eyes off of the ground and the way it shines. His lungs start contracting again. He knows what is coming, like days after days are repeating themselves through film in front of him. Sunwoo braces for impact.</p><p>“Champion!” Chanhee exclaims, meeting his eyes. He’s never left the Neith before because he doesn’t need to, with the job he has, the father he has, and it shows — Chanhee’s smile says <em> I have seen not nearly enough. </em> “No one for you to beat up today?”</p><p>It’s not meant to hurt so it doesn’t. Words are different than whatever injury he could suffer from, inside. Words he can accept like presents, can accommodate to his guts, live with them, companion. The good and the bad, an imprint; because, on the contrary, bones heal. Sunwoo smiles back at him and sighs loudly, theatrically. If Chanhee wants to talk about this, they will. “No,” Sunwoo breathes out, “I decided to not fight for a while. Something tells me I shouldn’t.”</p><p>Chanhee knows his name, of course, like most people who regularly come to the cage do, but he says “Champion,” again like a gasp, and then smiles something small and secretive, just for Sunwoo. “Since when do you listen?”</p><p>The outside of the glass panels brings solid ground to a good part of Sunwoo’s days so he thinks it would to Chanhee’s, too. If only he could leave and fly and feel it — how real he is. Sunwoo can’t do that for him. He smiles back something small and secretive, just for Chanhee, then shrugs. </p><p>“I had to start someday, don’t you agree?” What if it’s the right thing to do, he thinks, then, “What if that something’s right? What if it knows more than I do, about this?” About war and about myself and about everything else that has ever been born in this Universe. </p><p>What if it’s the right thing to do.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Medical Bay 02, the sign reads. The headache makes it hard to focus on the letters and in the unfamiliar way they settle in his brain. This is his first time on this side of the station — his first time training next to Changmin. His first time needing to ask Changmin for help. Sunwoo forces himself to inhale the stale air around him. He could just turn around. He could leave and he could lie and no one would know.</p><p>But, “How could you possibly think that?” can be heard from the inside, past the white doors. It’s not directed at him, Sunwoo knows, because Changmin’s concern sounds more genuine than it would, had that been the case. And he hasn’t opened his mouth since walking up to the small, bright room.</p><p>“I want more than anything for you to succeed. You know I do,” Changmin keeps saying. Sunwoo doesn’t dare look inside, but his feet are rooted to the spot. He turns his head to read the sign again, make sure he’s in the right place, double check if it’s okay for him to keep listening. Medical bays are always open. He rests his back against the cold wall, sighs, figures waiting won’t hurt anyone.</p><p>There’s a pause. Changmin is talking to someone over a communicator. Sunwoo can almost see his expression: eyebrows drawn together, bottom lip worried between his teeth, eyes focused and dark enough to make black holes seem like a joke, portrait of a man who has traveled the universe. Who travels the whole expanse of it willingly.</p><p>“Jacob,” he whispers from inside the room, vulnerable, small. The weight of it settles quietly in Sunwoo’s shoulders, something like recognition, This is how it feels to know. “It’s a suicide mission. You can’t go.” The please goes unsaid. Sunwoo hears it. He’s sure Jacob does, too.</p><p>Not being able to see is driving him mad. His head hurts — did he fall? Did someone push him? Was it part of the training? — and his eyes are heavy. Sunwoo waits for Changmin to say something else. He can practically feel the tension rising, the air shifting around him — Changmin is polarizing, full of unlike electric charges inside of him, a planet orbiting around his own self. Portrait of a man who is equal to the heat of every sun.</p><p>“Fine! Do whatever the fuck you want, Lieutenant!” He yells. Sunwoo doesn’t flinch. He can’t see but he wishes he could. How does this Changmin look? “Follow every order until one of them gets you killed. You keep playing God, Jacob, and it’s making you forget that sometimes you’re simply wrong.” And then, quieter, so low Sunwoo almost can’t hear it: “It’s making you forget that sometimes being wrong’s okay, too. But not like this.”</p><p>Sunwoo counts from one to ten and knocks on the big metal doors of the Medical Bay that never closes. He’s pretty sure his face says <em> I have a concussion </em>. Changmin is looking at the ground, expression somber, lips a thin line. When their eyes meet absolutely nothing is set in motion — there is but the emptiness of the space surrounding their mortal bodies, constant, the only thing that should tie them together but doesn’t. Jacob, Sunwoo recalls, is apparently leading a suicide mission soon. How many versions of this life has he lived through?</p><p>“Sit,” Changmin directs him to a stretcher connected to the far wall on his left. The place is an infirmary, more than anything, and Sunwoo thinks the glowing sign outside should say so. He sits. He waits. Changmin comes over to him, checks his head, uses a small flashlight to look for other symptoms he should worry about, smacks his lips when he finds none. Sunwoo’s eyes are trained to him, an exercise in stillness. </p><p>He grabs the pills that are offered to him after a beat or two. “So,” Changmin starts. His hair has red streaks in it, isn’t that against the rules? Can medical volunteers dye their hair?, and they optimize the fire in his eyes. “How much of that did you hear, Sunwoo?”</p><p>There is a mug filled to the brim with coffee on the table near them. He never drinks coffee because his bones rattle enough already, even without it, but suddenly he feels like downing the whole thing. (Nothing, Sunwoo wants so badly to say, wants to crawl inside his own chest until he’s not alive anymore, I didn’t hear anything, I promise.) Instead, what comes out of his mouth, completely disconnected from him, is: “I think they made him what he is for a reason, doc.”</p><p>Changmin’s eyebrows furrow again. Sunwoo has a gift for bringing that expression out on people. He starts to say, <em> But— </em> and Sunwoo can’t lose to him. Not again. He can’t let Changmin have this because Changmin already has so much and if he takes anything more from Sunwoo then there will be nothing left of him. If Sunwoo looked into a mirror, there would be this: flesh, skin, teeth, mistakes. Portrait of a man who has always wanted more than what he is allowed.</p><p>“No, no! Hey,” Sunwoo cuts Changmin off. He hopes he’s not being too loud or overstepping. Part of him, a small part, cares. “Don’t mind me. You’re the one who has to worry about him now. Thanks for the painkillers. I’ll get going. Need to rest.”</p><p>The walls shrink around him when he’s about to leave. Changmin yells “Wait!,” and he does. What is he, really. Sunwoo turns around. A flash of understanding crosses his brain; Changmin has nothing to say to him. Changmin thinks about the universe like he does, and they are both lost in its vastness, and the air is full of static— Changmin opens and closes his mouth many times but no sound will ever come out of it because they don’t know each other like that yet. Or won’t ever. Better with his eyes than with words, Changmin makes of black holes a joke and Sunwoo pretends not to miss the punchline.</p><p>“I’m training to be like him, you know,” he exhales. </p><p>“Is that what you want?” (I know nothing, he wants to say, I heard you and I am just as scared of losing him as you are. He can’t go. Please.) Sunwoo can see, then, just how different the two of them are. Not even the eternal, terrifying void surrounding them can create a bridge between what he is and what he knows the man in front of him to be, but Changmin still searches for something back, hidden in his eyes when he looks at him and— maybe this is it. Maybe Sunwoo can give him this. Past the vertigo, past the headache, past the bitterness, maybe, Sunwoo can at least give him this.</p><p>“Yeah,” Portrait of two souls that carry the same burden.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sunwoo tells himself that he’s prepared enough. He knows enough — sitting in the cockpit, looking at all the reds and blues of the control panel, thinking about countless, continuous sequences of tests and being tested. As with all other aspects of his otherwise unremarkable life, this is how he flies, too: striving for perfection. </p><p>Sunwoo spends half of his time breaking bones that aren’t his and calling it care. Wishing they were. (As if he was made of clay: this is what i would change, this is what i would improve. As if he was God: this is the reality i created for myself, and now i am living it. As if he was more than just a lost man:)</p><p>Commander Choi speaks briefly to him over the comms, and Sunwoo brings the starfighter to life. One more test he needs to pass. (wearing his skin tightly over what is left of his insides, there is nothing for me here. That is how he spends the other half.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Professor Lee meets him privately whenever Sunwoo asks him to. (“You teach good combat,” Sunwoo says, and it works every time.) They’re in one of the anti-gravity rooms with oxygen to spare. This is the type of training that makes him inhuman, fills his insides with metal, component of a large machine. The walls around their bodies are covered in glass and every now and then Sunwoo forces himself to look out of those and face the darkness surrounding them, their station — it stares right back, tells him You are scared of your mortality. Whatever that means.</p><p>Like everyone else aboard the Neith, Sunwoo is warborn. Fighting for dead men reasons. Tasting his own blood as Sangyeon’s suit-covered glove finds his chin and gives it a greeting. He wants to grow flowers and he wants to grow home but the sun has never seen him and Sunwoo is already grown. Has grown, already. </p><p>What use are roots, then, when you’re forever floating in space, and there is never any soil?</p><p>His body makes a dull thud when it hits the wall, bounces off, starts traveling towards the center of the room again. It’s hard having no place to go. He tries to grab one of Sangyeon’s legs, but Sunwoo isn’t fast enough, never enough. There are levels to this — “Your bad temper will get you nowhere, Sunwoo,” he hears a voice inside his head say, and swallows down the annoyed grunt on the tip of his tongue. <em> It’s okay to try again. </em> It’s okay to try again, no one will yell at him because he’s already graduated once and this is just extra knowledge, and he wants to learn, wants to become bigger than he is. It’s okay to try again.</p><p>Sangyeon lets out a cough when Sunwoo’s body collides with his, front to Sangyeon’s back, and Sunwoo can’t see his face but he’s sure Sangyeon is smiling. The first punch is just for show, and so is the second—directed at the end of Sangyeon’s ribcage, protected by the black and mud-green suit he’s wearing, light as air. </p><p>The third collision sends Sangyeon spiralling back, front to glass, face to undeniable truths everyone in the station is too afraid to say out loud: there is no place to hide, purpose is a man-made weapon, you are scared of your mortality. Whatever those mean. </p><p>“I think that’s enough for today, kid,” Sangyeon tells him. Final — <em> fine, then! </em> — like he always is about all things training. He waits for Sunwoo to nod and follow him out of the big room. Is it okay, a voice inside his brain asks, if I want to break the glass windows somehow. “Free time usually means being nowhere near this place, you know?” Just for a while. Just close to the point of no return, and then return and close them.</p><p>(Sun-woo. Sun-woo.)</p><p>“I know, Professor. I’m sorry I keep dragging you here to punch me while we float around.” </p><p>Sangyeon smiles sweetly at him, and Sunwoo feels strangely seen. They exchange their goodbyes, their see you soons, their take cares. He watches as Professor Lee turns off the machines, locks the room after scanning his fingerprints and with the help of the card around his neck. A good person who has good people to go home to. </p><p>Sunwoo takes the long way back to the room units, thinks about how many minutes it takes to walk from place to place when you have no idea where you’re going.</p><p>Nowhere to nowhere. </p><p>There is a song stuck in his head, something old, probably bossa nova. It makes him mess up the numbers of his door code, too focused on how the foreign words sound coming out of his mouth. Sunwoo gets it right on the second try. </p><p>The suitcase he sits on top of his bed carries exactly three casual T-shirts, three pairs of jeans, some underwear, a couple other random items. (How weird it is, he thinks, to compact your whole life like this. Save all you own and be able to carry it around. Such an odd feeling.) He shouldn’t be wearing his uniform on a day off but it felt unprofessional to meet Sangyeon in something other than the white, black-detailed space suit he has six identical copies of in his wardrobe, so Sunwoo takes it off finally, hangs it up with the only hanger he has left. His body swallows the color blue when he gets changed — an oversized T‐shirt, definitely his if he doesn’t overthink it, so he tries not to.</p><p>Going outside is like getting stuck in the same room you’ve lived all your life in. The air smells and feels the same. The station is still somewhere, and he is still not. Sunwoo locks the door to his sixty four square feet unit. Dimmed blue lights tell him it’s already late. The taste of blood still lingers in his mouth as if he’s somehow forgotten to get rid of it, and— what kind of light would he need, to take the blood, feed it to the sprout, give it warmth, give it life? What kind of plant could he cultivate like this? </p><p>How many people have befriended the sun, Sunwoo wonders as he walks. There are child soldiers all around him everywhere he looks. How many people have felt its warmth, and how many of those were deserving of it. Doesn’t he deserve it, too?</p><p>Hushed voices make their way to his ears. He’s acutely aware of who they belong to, — they belong to each other and never to him, after all — but it’s impossible to understand the mess of Korean they’re speaking in. Second Lieutenant Bae, Doctor Ji. Their eyes meet but Sunwoo can’t tell who he’s looking at, or who’s looking at him, or what kinds of plants can thrive without sunshine.</p><p>Isn’t it funny, how those work? Moving without movement. Planting your feet on one spot forever. </p><p>(Sunwoo is always on his way to somewhere. He doesn’t know where, yet, but he is on his way. Has been all his life.)</p><p>(Where can he possibly escape to?)</p><p>(What is he, really.)</p><p>Funny how no one around him ever goes places, or, counterargument, everyone but him, a single weed in an otherwise healthy garden. He looks at the burden and at the only other soul in the whole Universe who carries it, and Sunwoo asks himself, quietly, inside the mess of his own thoughts, between walls he’s never finished putting up:</p><p>Do flowers ever miss the freedom of being a seed.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(You’re in the middle of everything and the stars are out to get you. They don’t have legs, or faces, but they keep getting closer and closer and you can’t run because your lungs are filled with empty so the stars will eventually make you as their own, un kind, in human. Hyphen.</p><p>They have teeth that chew the world, and you only have ash, cement, wood and bricks. You can’t win. You can’t wake up, either. That’s the first worst part — the second: now you’re surrounded.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jacob is the youngest they’ve ever had in command. Pseudo-command. It’s impressive but sad, — they keep losing men, kids are now men, too, and no one seems to care — and Sunwoo knows not a lot of people are <em> proud </em>of him for getting where he is. Jacob is the youngest they’ve ever had in command, and he’s disposable. Sunwoo hates how much he feels like following Jacob’s footsteps. </p><p>It’s their thing, people have said so many times, always eating lunch together. It’s their thing to switch mess halls randomly during the week. Sunwoo finds them by accident the day after one of his midterms, and he can’t help but watch: Jacob the anchor, Changmin the chains tied to it, a simpler lesson on how gravity works. (Do they ever feel like floating. Do they prefer being grounded. Do I want to know the answer.)</p><p>They’re sitting three tables away from him to his left: Jacob the soil, Changmin the petals; honey-covered and terrifyingly beautiful. Sunwoo chews what is left on his plate with a bitter taste coating his tongue, blood.</p><p>Sunwoo watches: Jacob the silence, moments before and moments after, Changmin the deafening screams, during, the ones he could never get rid of, out of his head. Knowing and not knowing, a whole universe on their own, of their own accord. Portrait of humanity and what is left of it —<em> how heavy are guns, </em> Sunwoo asks himself, <em> is Jacob hyper aware of the pistol in his holster. </em></p><p>He sees them as seniors first, people second, Second Lieutenant Bae Jacob, volunteer medic Ji Changmin, Cob, Cobie, someone similar, alike, the same. Sunwoo watches them from three tables away. He’s had to accept many things in life, but this is something he so badly wants, so desperately craves, can he accept it, too? (Not knowing. Knowing. It could start another war; make flowers grow, incendiary.) Can he let this go? How could <em> Jacob </em>have left this, them, go? (What does he see now. What did he see then.) </p><p>A few different eyes meet his every once in a while. Sunwoo acknowledges them, nods at his colleagues, doesn’t gesture for anyone to come sit with him at his table because if he speaks now the words will overflow, overthrow him, make their way out using force — he’ll say things he means and things he doesn’t and Sunwoo has no idea which of those scares him the most.</p><p>Jacob and Changmin have been together for a while. He doesn’t feel like learning when, exactly, but Sunwoo can say for certain it started months after Jacob got the framed medal he keeps safely tucked away in the gray locker in his office. They were still talking, then, Sunwoo and Jacob. So Sunwoo knows as much—this much.</p><p>Everything started to feel blurry once he was reassigned. After he came to the Neith. Sunwoo hadn’t seen Jacob in over a year, but he had ashes and scars and splinters in his fingers from carrying around so much wood, dreaming of permanence for so long, digging into his own thorax in search of a heart he didn’t own, <em> build a home here, build a home here, build a— </em>. It felt blurry, but it was all he had. </p><p>And still Jacob refused to give it to him. Kim Sunwoo, Leading Rate, near the end barely there and then not even close at all. How many versions of this life has he lived through?</p><p>When you’re aware of your insignificance in the grand scheme of things, in the neverending House of Stars they keep crashing through, things like growing old mean nothing. He would like to grow old, someday. Sunwoo would like to feel the masses under his skin travel places inside of him with time, bones malleable, body pliant, everchanging. <em> Is this soil nice enough? Have I done well? How do you like your home, </em>he wants to ask them, even now.</p><p>Jacob and Changmin are whole cycles ahead of him, old, rotten.</p><p>The band around his wrist says 1300, digital. The twist, here, is that time is his enemy — in and out of jets, starfighters, like he has the power to take, end life as he sees fit, time is always watching him — and Sunwoo is always one step behind, always one step away from something big. (Always going somewhere. Never getting there, but on his way to.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sunwoo wakes up cold and it’s a feeling that makes residence in him for the rest of the day; Sunwoo wakes up cold, puts on the warmest sweater he owns, knows that he’ll need an extra blanket to sleep with once it’s time for bed. It’s something he’s had to live all his life with: being someone so in need of warmth. He doesn’t question it more than he should.</p><p>The corridors are empty once he sets his foot out the door. He knows most of the other pilots on this side of the station by name and face and nothing else, but it’s not like he’s ever made an effort for that to change. Sunwoo’s focus is on becoming something greater than himself. Star-swallowed becomes star-swallower, anti-supernova. He wants everyone to look at him and see their expectations come to life, double them, make them a reality so true and unshakable the Universe would set itself on fire out of fear.</p><p>His sweater isn’t warm enough for the ice in his veins because he woke up cold and it’s a permanent feeling. It’s something he’s learned to live all his life with: Sunwoo wants, wants, wants.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Main hangar lights paint him sick, sickly. Sunwoo sits and feels alone on a catwalk too many feet above the ground. He’s been here before. Time 0400, his watch tells him. It’s late, and it’s been far too long since he’s let himself think about what it means to be where he is and do what he does. If it is even worth something.</p><p>Footsteps echo to his right, where the stairs are located. Sunwoo has to remind himself of the badge on his chest, <em> it’s okay to be here, it’s okay, </em> you’re okay. A flashlight illuminates his face, his eyes—he can’t see the person he’s supposed to be looking at, can’t tell if he should salute or run or stay. It’s unnerving, everything about this is; from the place to the time to the terrifying realization that he might be the luckiest guy in their current squadron. Or the opposite. </p><p>The flashlight gets turned off. “Kim Sunwoo,” Jacob says, reflects station-blue as he walks three short steps to then crouch down near the place Sunwoo sits. “Kim Sunwoo,” he repeats, as if Sunwoo hadn’t heard him the first time, as if Sunwoo wasn’t wired to pay attention to whatever leaves Jacob’s mouth, live it, make it verifiable. </p><p>There’s so much he has to say, so much he wants to say, so much he could. “You’re the one taking care of this place, now? Like a night guard?”</p><p>“Funny,” Jacob says. It isn’t. Never was. </p><p>“I’m supposedly the one on South Wing duty tonight.” There is a sigh somewhere in the middle of it, almost unnoticeable. Sunwoo notices. He mirrors it. His heart aches for a world in which there aren’t any jets under their feet, or soldier duties for them to attend to. “Saw someone in one of the big monitors I have to look at for hours. How long have you been here?”</p><p>It’s a question way too easy to ignore. Sunwoo doesn’t mean to push, but does, still. He is skin and mistakes, after all. Insoluble.</p><p>“Do you have your gun with you?” <em> Can you feel the weight of it without pressing your thumbs down on the trigger </em> , his next words would be, <em> because I can, mine, even out of the cockpit </em>. (Does it weigh you down: the gun, the expectations no one really believes you to meet? The different way in which you see the world, does it weigh you down?) </p><p>I know what it feels like, Sunwoo thinks, I know the power it gives you. </p><p>He’s never had anything close to a holster on his leg. Those are for his superiors, who have trained more, whose faces the people in the cage don’t have memorized as regulars.</p><p>“I’m not even in uniform, Sunwoo, why would I have a beam weapon with me?” Jacob is wearing sweatpants and a white shirt. It’s almost unsettling, how human he looks. How holy. When he sits down on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with someone he probably shouldn’t, Sunwoo realizes there are certain things that can’t be translated into thought, or language. A feeling this big. (What is he.)</p><p>“Did you give up on off-Neith missions, then? Are you just a night guard now?” (<em> Please— </em>Please what, Sunwoo doesn’t know, doesn’t really register. It feels like something important. He wants to ask Jacob to stay for the second time in his life.)</p><p>The flashlight turns on, then off again. Jacob is playing with it. He doesn’t have an answer, maybe, or he does and doesn’t want to tell Sunwoo. “You know, I can leave, if—”</p><p>“No,” Jacob cuts him off. “No to those three. I— How much do you know about the exploration, uh, first recognition trip to Manea?”</p><p>How much do I know about anything ever, “Happened a while back. Some people died in the explosion. Manea’s satellites aren’t stable, or something? Chanhee probably mentioned that. I think. Not sure.”</p><p>Jacob is a hundred years old when he stares right into Sunwoo’s eyes and tells him “They want me to lead the second one. Commander Choi doesn’t want anyone else. He says I should learn how to.”</p><p>“Commander Choi is more than twice your age.” <em> Please. </em></p><p>“Which is why they want me, and why I should go. I’m not prepared to be like him here, Sunwoo.” <em> So everyone else needs to be prepared for something much more evil. </em></p><p>(It’s different than being set on fire. As if the universe was taking its own life: I am scared of my own infinity.)</p><p>Sunwoo looks at him then. Jacob lacks a certain fear, or maybe his is different from the one Sunwoo carries, wears like a cloak. Not impermanence. Not mortality. Whatever Jacob sees outside the glass walls tells him <em> Nothing you ever do will be enough. No decision </em> you <em> ever make will be the right one. </em> Sunwoo thinks he can understand that. “Well,” he breathes out, shrugs his shoulders, <em> well. </em></p><p>“Changmin said I shouldn’t go. We’re— things are weird between us, now. Because of this.” Sunwoo pries the flashlight off from Jacob’s fingers. He wants to hold his hand, but the soil is still exhausted from last time, and certain wounds take a lot of time to heal. He would know—they both would.</p><p>“It’s not like you to come to me randomly. I should’ve known only a mission like this would come between you guys,” (I am sorry. I am sorry for you, and sorry for me, and sorry this is what it has come to.) “What do you need to hear, Cobie?” </p><p>Whatever strings holding Jacob’s courageous act together collapse, and the next moment he’s whispering “You’re okay with this?” to Sunwoo in a near-cry. Sunwoo wants him to know that <em> no, he isn’t </em>, but even more than that he wants to be good. Not someone Jacob can take care of anymore, and not someone he should. </p><p>“What do you need to hear, Jacob?”</p><p>“I—you know what, this was a mistake. I shouldn’t— I forgot that—”</p><p>Sunwoo wants to believe he knows what that means, too. “The way you look at him,” he says, “You used to look at me like that. Of course I’m not okay with this. You know I’m not. It’s a dumb mission. A dumb everything. But if someone doesn’t believe in you, you have a hard time believing in yourself; isn’t that how this works?”</p><p>(Sunwoo wants to be the biggest know-it-all, complimentary.)</p><p>“This? <em> Me </em>?” (Isn’t that how universes are created.)</p><p>Jacob looks at him funny because Sunwoo must have done it first. His eyebrows are furrowed. Jacob might not know everything but this is easy, like <em> meet me in Hangar 01 when you’re finished studying </em> or <em> I made you tea because you look tired, baby. </em></p><p>“This isn’t how anything works, Sunwoo. You knew that the Neith had always been my goal,” Jacob all but sobs. “You wanted me to choose you. I could never do that.”</p><p>And—oh. (Here’s why you’re wrong, here’s why you know nothing, here’s the reason one can never make a home out of somebody else’s blood and bones:)</p><p>Sunwoo gets up, dusts off his knees, his thighs. Looks down at Jacob and understands this is how real people are made for the first time in his life. “No. I never asked you to choose. All I wanted was for you to keep me, Cobie. Lieutenant. But you didn’t.”</p><p>He waits for Jacob to get up as well, and close like this Sunwoo could even pretend, if he had the guts to.</p><p>“I didn’t,” Jacob sighs, “and yet here we are.”</p><p>What does it mean to know, Sunwoo asks, like an outsider, What does the antonym. To Jacob, he only says “Come talk to me when you’re about to leave,” and then does it himself; an exercise in repeated motions, washed-out ashes of a portrait.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“So you’re saying you wanna get back with Lieutenant Bae?”</p><p>“Yes. Call him Jacob, no one is listening. You’re not getting in trouble for saying his name,” Sunwoo has been annoyed for a while. Not at Chanhee, bless his soul, but at the situation he’s found himself in. </p><p>Jacob and Changmin. And Sunwoo. Haven’t suns swallowed enough planets already? (He doesn’t know. He forgets to pay attention in class, sometimes.)</p><p>“Sunwoo,” Chanhee says, sighs <em> Champion </em>in a way Sunwoo can understand but not hear, “I know this makes sense in your head and all, but he’s clearly moved on. Shouldn’t you, too?”</p><p>Chanhee doesn’t know Jacob like Sunwoo does. It’s then that Sunwoo realizes he might not know Jacob at all, but still— Chanhee knows less. Knows Second Lieutenant Bae, never Cob, never <em> babe, you’ll never guess who just got a perfect score on their test today! </em> or <em> It’s never gonna work. We’re living different lives, Sunwoo </em> Cobie. Chanhee will never know anything in between.</p><p>“He’s not my superior, you know? He’s like your father’s glorified assistant, or some shit. I don’t answer to him.” Is it called being stubborn even when you’re right? </p><p>Chanhee rolls his eyes. The hall is mostly empty, there are no glass walls, Sunwoo feels grounded enough, and Chanhee will never understand what a relationship between two cadets means because he’s never had to spend his days exhausting both his mind and body to the limit by someone’s side, and his visits to the cage are the closest to Sunwoo’s reality he’ll ever get, so—he doesn’t know. How could he?</p><p>“Titles mean something to most people, idiot.” </p><p>“They do to me, too. Just not his. I don’t want a title to erase all the time we spent together. I want—” I want to know him<em>.</em> <em>Before it’s too late, I want to know and learn him, meet him halfway. </em>“Actually,” Sunwoo takes a deep breath. He stares directly at the blue lights, grimaces. “I feel like punching that guy Changmin in the face. He’s got a face that is begging to be punched, don’t you think?”</p><p>Chanhee smirks at him, clearly amused. “Invite him to the cage. He’s a doctor, right? He’ll be able to take care of himself once you’re done with him.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When he was little, galaxies and light-years away from where he stands, Sunwoo used to hear stories about heroes and their starfighters almost every night before bed. “Are stars bad?” He would ask his mother, “Why do we have to fight them?”</p><p>He remembers her sighs the most—so full of care, wrapped delicately in joy. Sunwoo remembers the repeated “Stars are whatever you want them to be, my baby” and the small explanation of the name she had to give him before he understood, remembers the <em> oh! We fight </em> with <em> the stars </em> that became so clear to him then. </p><p>Sunwoo doesn’t remember a single star ever fighting by his side. (We fight chewed, devoured, swallowed by stars. We fight each other, and the stars are there, and their teeth are there, and we can’t stop fighting for a second or we’ll either forget why we started or cease to exist as we do now.)</p><p>Doctor Ji stands by his side, and that alone makes the ivy in Sunwoo’s throat all the more poisonous. If Changmin can see the stiffness in Sunwoo’s posture he doesn’t comment on it. Not gratitude, but something different crawls up Sunwoo’s spine, something flammable and dangerously close to the flames already, like kinship. </p><p>Like, <em> How alike are we, be honest? </em></p><p>It was complete silence while they ate, the two of them alone in the staff cafeteria near Medical Bay 02, near the library, three tables apart, Sunwoo exhausted from his readings and Changmin— well, Sunwoo thinks, brain overridden, whatever it is that he does, the heavy bags under his eyes are unmistakable. Do that many people get hurt in the Neith? </p><p>Now they’re talking. They will talk, one of them is going to. Or Sunwoo will drag Changmin to the cage by the hairs and paint him outer space. The space outside.</p><p>Chanhee had messaged him before going to bed earlier, a simple <em> good luck on your test tomorrow! </em> he appreciates, but it’s been three hours and Sunwoo can’t remember the coordinates and the constellations and all the possible jet routes he’s supposed to have memorized, or even how the alphabet goes. Just his luck.</p><p>He takes his eyes off the horizon-less view in front of him, risks looking at Changmin, still silent to his right. The lights outside are brighter than the night ones from the ship, and Changmin’s side profile hits him like this: Are stars bad. / Stars are whatever you want them to be. It’s his own discovery, a lightbulb moment that belongs only to him, and Sunwoo holds it close to his chest. (He will look back and know — this is when, where everything was set on fire. Not the Universe. Not a forest. Not even a tree. Tiny petals, set neatly in a small pile, and all the heat surrounding them.)</p><p><em> Have you ever been to the cage, </em>  Sunwoo keeps looking at him. There’s no way Changmin can’t see or sense the force of his stare. Have you ever been to the cage, it’s at the tip of his tongue, ask him, he’ll say no, it’ll be over, one way or another. Have you ever been to the cage, what are you made of, what are you, really? <em> Have you ev— </em> “I envy you,” Sunwoo breathes out instead, and it is just the same. </p><p>Changmin laughs. It’s not <em> at </em> him, Sunwoo knows, but it still confuses him. Is being envied by someone a good thing? Is Changmin going to say something like, You shouldn’t be?</p><p>It takes the eternity of five seconds for the answer to come, “Of course you are. I know you still— Jacob, I mean, I know that you and Jacob—” Sunwoo shakes his head. Changmin still isn’t looking at him, but his tone is almost vulnerable, his response so small. He swallows whatever his next words were, and that is the end of it.</p><p>It’s his way of saying <em> I know. I’m sorry. I never meant to take anything from you </em>, but that is not the reason. Was it ever? Sunwoo clicks his tongue. </p><p>There are moments he likes to look back at fondly, but not all of them are perfect. The ones near the end can hardly be called good. Just like Jacob had learned to fit himself into the cracks of Sunwoo’s existence, with time he had learned to collect what he had left behind and fit himself into the cracks of someone else’s. It’s not about still— Jacob, I mean, I know that you and Jacob—</p><p>“Most of us don’t know what peace looks like,” Sunwoo confesses, a whisper, and says goodbye to the poison ivy in his throat, hello to the flowers. He’s grown. He’s growing.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sunwoo slams his hands on the desk a second time. Commander Choi stares wordlessly at him, and the blood beneath his skin and inside his veins starts screaming before he does.</p><p>“What more do you need from me?! All the papers are here. I said I’d volunteer, and I am volunteering, sir.” The words <em> Lieutenant Kim Sunwoo </em> are silent. Heavy. He’s done it. He made it, and this is what it means. “Best grades in your class this year, and last year, and the one before that. Isn’t that enough?” (— <em> please. </em>)</p><p>They have a lot more to discuss. Sunwoo’s patience is wearing thin, and he wants this to be over soon, before his insides freeze and take him with them, before he speaks about reasons and similar beings and souls who make him understand what gravitational pulls mean. Sunwoo wants this to be over soon so he can have the chance to bury himself in warmth, his own, after ripping through layers and layers of  the lies he’s told over the years. </p><p>“You must not have a lot to lose, kid,” Commander Choi says. Sunwoo recognizes Chanhee’s eyes in his, tired, knowing. “Or nothing to fear.”</p><p>Sunwoo sees a chance to override the stars and claws at it, catches it with his teeth, the only thing he understands. The only thing that no one can ever take from him—because he won’t let them, and because this is <em> his. </em> To die in the hands of something you’re scared of, but to do it willingly, Sunwoo thinks; that is routine. If he can’t have anything else, then at least he can have this, and he can bend this one thing to his will. A whispered rebellion. (This is my garden, and I choose when and how to set it on fire.)</p><p>“It’s my duty, sir.” This is what he owes the Universe. What it owes him in return.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Changmin looks at him with a mixture of gratitude and guilt that Sunwoo knows like he would an old friend. He wants to tell him <em> it’s not your fault, </em> but they’ve never lied to each other, Sunwoo thinks, and he doesn’t want to start now. Or ever. Changmin looks at him and Sunwoo wants to tear himself loose from every single one of his truths, I know you, I can see you, we are the same. </p><p>There are words he could use, if he knew how to. He doesn’t. Sunwoo never learned. Learns. In a bigger room, if they were there, him, Changmin and Jacob, in a bigger room where they could breathe— maybe he could try to tell them how the idea of belonging makes him feel. Explain why hope is such an undesirable thing; why they  should never live past it. Hope never brought men joy because after hope comes dread, or the second act of a happily-ever-after book. There are stories some people would rather not read. There are stories that haven’t been written yet.</p><p>“You know you don’t have to do this,” Jacob says, by Changmin’s side, always, orbit well-known and practised. The tears in his eyes look a lot like something beautiful, something imperfect, for once. </p><p>“I should, though, right?” <em> Because this is how it works, how it was always supposed to. </em>Sunwoo picks up all the seeds he’s planted and takes them with him. It’s been a long time; more time than the last, long enough for solitude to become a constant, for his body to stop wanting, his mind to stop chasing something he knows better than to hope for. A theory proven false. An experiment gone wrong: Sunwoo looks at them and sees cuts that go deeper than his own surface, that have mutilated him past the healing point. It’s the only thing he knows and understands—them. And now this, too.</p><p>His team consists of four people, plus him, <em> Captain, </em>  who will most likely die. Sunwoo has his feet ready to take him to the ship, board it, say goodbye. He’s suffocating with the weight of his humanity and theirs. “You could stay,” Changmin whispers, but he can’t. “Please? <em> Please </em> stay.”</p><p>“They’ve updated the calculations, okay? It’s fine. Just a mapping trip. Don’t start crying on me, Changmin, not you too.” </p><p>“We’ll wait for you,” Changmin answers, like that says something, like that makes any sense, like Sunwoo is supposed to know what that means. “We’ll be here when you come back,” like Sunwoo isn’t going away for that same reason: for them to be there, stay there, keep being. It’s almost distracting, to hear it out loud. The terror of a feeling so uncertain, its birth, the permanence of it; like splinters under his fingernails.</p><p>Jacob is quiet. His silence dances around them like the roots of an old tree, vines and thorns, makes the moment heavier than Sunwoo intended for it to be. He walked up to their shared unit waiting to see relief, unimportant. He’s turned to silt, windpipe overflowing with it. The white corridor lights flicker before turning teal. </p><p>“He means it. We’ll be waiting.”</p><p>“I have to go. Don’t say that to me ever again, alright?” (How curious it is, that it doesn’t hurt like he thought it would. This has been a long time coming and it doesn’t hurt at all.)</p><p>Sunwoo starts walking back, turns to them and smiles. They’re both hiding tears, holding back sobs. The lesson, here, is that peace looks different for everyone. To him, it means choosing. It’s the kind of power eagles drown in when eating a liver, absolutely intoxicating to cause the damage and still be the one leaving first. </p><p>Sunwoo runs a few steps. “You have to promise!” He yells at them, the biggest liar, and they follow, <em> We promise!, </em> the same.</p><p>And then, just like livers, the flowers grow right back.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(The thing you fear most looks at you in the eye and says <em> Do not be scared </em> , <em> for when you look in the mirror I’ll be there to take you, too. </em>You want to scream your lungs out and get rid of the air inside them, bury yourself deep enough to be compressed, condensed, turn pinprick small. </p><p>You face it head first, say <em> Go on, then, </em> high-pitched and taunting. How ironic. You choose how to go but end up coming back. Renascent. Cense. </p><p>A portrait.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sunwoo meets Changmin’s eyes with the confidence of someone who’s lived. (Someone who’s dug up their insides, chin up while their guts hit the floor, then looked at the mess like it was intentional.) He thrives in orderly chaos—the glowing of Changmin’s tears, the shaking of his voice, the breathing of his vowels. Jacob doesn’t interrupt them, doesn’t say a word, and now Sunwoo thinks he knows why. They should talk about it.</p><p>“Your hair is so long,” Changmin says instead.</p><p>He’s left gasping for oxygen. “I didn’t think you’d still be on the Neith.”</p><p>“Where else would we be?” (—<em> please. </em>)</p><p>(“Please, I don’t deserv—”)</p><p>“Anywhere else. It’s not—<em> well, </em>I mean, I just didn’t think you’d still be here.”</p><p>Jacob sighs. It’s one of the many sounds Sunwoo knows like the back of his hand, like his alarm in the morning, like his crewmates’s laughter, like his own beating heart. “Time was good to you,” Jacob says — like he could narrate Sunwoo’s thoughts. Like the hand relocating Sunwoo’s internal organs belonged to him and not Sunwoo himself.</p><p>“It isn’t always,” Sunwoo answers him. “But yes, this time it was. It would’ve been either way. Just so you know.” And they do. Sunwoo believes they do.</p><p>In their casual clothes, sitting next to each other on the floor, Sunwoo almost lets himself believe that he won. He finished the race he was competing in. He beat the stars at their own game, ended up safe, made it back home. He wants to ask Jacob and Changmin if they can read him as well as he thinks they can. There’s a missing call from Chanhee on his comm, but he can’t bring himself to answer it because Chanhee <em>will</em> <em>never get it. </em>Chanhee can’t. Not like Changmin does, not like Jacob does—</p><p>But.</p><p>“Thank you for volunteering in my place, Sunwoo. I—” <em> Was scared. Completely hysterical. I could never leave, but you? I— </em>“Missed you. We both did, actually. Changmin thinks you’re really brave. And kinda hot, too.”</p><p>“I’m glad to be back. You don’t have to thank me,” No one else could ever <em>get</em> <em>it</em>: Sunwoo, never in his life able to see the sun, feeling its warmth at the tip of his fingers, billions of rays, planets on fire, “and if Changmin does think that, then he should tell me himself.”</p><p>“You’ve always been hot. You look hotter with your hair tied up, though.”</p><p>“It’s called a man bun. Kevin Moon taught me.”</p><p>“Cool,” (It’s strange. Being away didn’t put out the fires like it was supposed to. Changmin looks at him and Sunwoo wonders if he sees skin and bones. Wonders if he sees humanity, or something entirely different.) “I really want you to kiss me.”</p><p>(But.) He will ruin this, too. Because self-sabotage just means Sunwoo is in control. Because Changmin is looking at him like he is something divine and something broken and Sunwoo knows he is only one of those, and, like last time, he has accepted it—not something that hurts, just something that exists. Something that is.</p><p>“I’m going back next year.”</p><p>Changmin stops. Next to him Jacob goes noticeably stiff, and this is it. The end of an unstarted possibility. Ablaze uncharted territory. <em> I’m going back next year</em>,  Sunwoo says, final, and realizes everything he has ever wanted is for someone to either sink their teeth into his spine to keep him in place or be there to watch him go. It’s so much more than he could ever bring himself to ask of anyone— he couldn’t, he <em> can’t</em>. What Jacob and Changmin want from him is so much more than what he could ever give them because they want him to be <em> there </em> and who even <em> is he— </em></p><p>“Sunwoo,” Jacob whispers. He’s close, so close, but he’s not touching Sunwoo at all. There’s a faint smile on his lips that gives up the fact that he knows what kind of tea Sunwoo drinks when he can’t sleep at night — it’s camomile. “We waited. We’ll be waiting next year, too.”</p><p>“No, you don’t understand, I <em> chose </em> to—”</p><p>“You chose to go back.” There’s a thumb on Sunwoo’s cheek. Jacob’s. It rearranges years of misplaced memories, says <em> no need to hide anymore. </em> They’re getting closer to each other; like taking the second first footsteps in paths centuries old. “You think I don’t see the war just like you do, Sunwoo?”</p><p>Jacob kisses him. (It outgrows the fear, the need for oxygen. It scratches gently at his sides, thorns barely breaking skin, bright and dark red blood trailing his ribcage and then the fingers on his waist. Just like war. Just like a flower bed. Sunwoo waters both, has been for all his life.)</p><p>Changmin is different from Sunwoo in this: he is safe. He might have trained the same way Sunwoo did, at some point, standard and cruel, and he might be all sharp edges, polarization, but he is safe, now. That is a reality Sunwoo has chosen not to experience. Can’t bring himself to. Under broken bones he could always find a resting place, and if what it takes to deserve one again is to force his way outside of the station walls, then so be it.</p><p>There’s no epiphany, or there is one and he doesn’t notice. Changmin kisses him next. This is what I am made of, Sunwoo thinks, petals and their dirt, stems set on fire. This is what I am made of: ashes, and smoke, and lungs always half-full. Bright as the Sun, brighter, even. A heart that has grown twice its size.</p><p>“It’ll take a long time,” he whispers, lips connected to a planet. “I might take a long time. Again. And then more times after that too.”</p><p>(This is how things end up working out, everything, ever—not by luck, not by fate, never a coincidence: with practice, once it becomes muscle memory, when nothing in the multitude of existing worlds can force a creator away from their creation. Sewn together gruesomely enough that it would hurt to be teared apart; Sunwoo knows this. Changmin and Jacob know this.)</p><p>“It’s okay. You’re okay, Sunwoo,” the planet answers. It orbits around its own self, eaten by the stars for breakfast, lunch and dinner, spinning where the universe can see, planting kisses on everything it reaches.</p><p>Besides them, a second, different universe turns small. It’s learning something. It’s always learning something. Jacob says, “We are,” and Sunwoo is. Changmin, as well. The three of them. Like a syzygy. If what it takes to defeat the stars is to become one of them, Sunwoo thinks, then it might as well be like this. Where he is okay; where he can rest.</p><p>Sunwoo breathes anyway, like he always has. (They work their way through it.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>HA! space gays! v****** could never.</p><p>  <a href="https://twitter.com/TSUK7I?s=09">twt</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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